Business Trends

Tips To Make Your Site A More Powerful Marketing Tool The marketing and business aspects of websites is an ongoing process. Unfortunately, many photographers fall behind in keeping their websites up-to-date with new images, cleaner navigation, search engine optimization, and getting clients to respond to the site. It may be due to the purchasing aspect...

A 27-year photo veteran, Gil Smith (www.gilsmith.com) is an internationally-recognized advertising photographer specializing in high-action automotive and sports-industry images. Smith is currently one of Canon U.S.A., Inc.'s prestigious "Explorers of Light," a small group of professionals chosen to push the...

All of the photography business owners I spoke with emphasized that they need good assistants as much as the assistants need them. They mentioned two things above all: do good follow-up when looking for work and, when you get a job, stay focused on the shoot. Another common concern was the lack of marketing information for the photo assistant trying to find work with a photographer. Hopefully...

Beyond learning how to handle cameras and photo equipment, working as a photo assistant will teach you many lessons that will go a long way toward helping you build a successful career. Skills you’d most likely garner include learning about project management, studio protocols, location procedures, dealing with clients, preproduction and postproduction work, and more. These are all essential business skills and can often be learned only “on the job.” Indeed, talk to many established pros today and you’ll find that’s how they got their start.

Every workshop I give, someone asks, “How important is a website for marketing my work?” Marketing with a website is still a relatively new technology compared with print marketing, and most pros agree it mainly serves as an addition to the marketing mix and does not replace other tools. If there’s one thing I learned when researching this story, though, it’s that we are...

Successful wedding photographers have been through a lot of changes in the past year. Couples who turn to a professional (instead of someone’s cousin with a camera) are looking for more than ordinary snapshots. Today, you need to offer more style and greater value to maintain a successful business. Current industry trends for wedding photography styles include fine art, photojournalism...

The photography of natural disasters and human tragedy—from earthquakes to suicide bombers—is an area of photojournalism filled with challenges. Photojournalists often face both physical and emotional obstacles but still need to keep a cool head and continue capturing the images. While their photos will tell the story of the event, photographers have their own personal stories to tell as well. The accounts told here are mostly about business but also touch on the heart of why someone takes on this area of photography and keeps going despite the emotional toll. We discuss issues of privacy and model releases, working at a disaster scene, what agencies to coordinate with, handling injury and trauma, and the pros and cons of pursuing this work.

As a way of building their business, photographers often ask me about working with a rep. As an art/photo rep, I deal with the commercial clients for the "talent" I represent. Being this rep means handling the selling, pricing, negotiating, and scheduling while the photographer concentrates on the creative aspects of the assignment. Most photographers are asking me...

One of my favorite workshop topics is "sales strategies" and that's probably because I have not met many people who got into photography to become salespeople. When I give this workshop at photographic conferences and association chapters I am always impressed by the number of questions and concerns photographers have about selling. Without a rep, selling...

When photographers sell their work they are not only selling images. Fees also include the rights to the use of photos, so additional factors such as overhead, equipment, experience, and personal expertise must be considered. For sometime industry associations have recommended and referred photographers to books and other written guidelines that were dedicated to helping establish...

If you ask a dozen photo buyers to define lifestyle photography you’d get a dozen different answers. The most common reply might be “people doing everyday things, at home and at work.” Lifestyle images are valuable in stock, but what about assignment work? Our contributors this month validate the market for assignments—under certain conditions. The images should be natural and the models and situations realistic and believable. They should tell some kind of story or depict an emotion. As with any stock or assignment work, topnotch production values are critical as well as diversity in models of gender, age, and ethnicity. Whether stock or assignment, lifestyle photography is in demand in today’s market.

The stock photo business—making images on speculation and then attempting to match the image to a buyer—has seen major changes. The traditional business model of the stock agency serving as a photographer’s agent has shifted to the picture library model. Other changes have included companies hiring staff photographers to create stock—as opposed to using outtakes and spec...